Friday, March 31, 2017

Did the US Government Spy on Trump? Of Course. It Spies on All of Us!

Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity - There was high drama last week when Rep. Devin Nunes announced at the White House that he had seen evidence that the communications of the Donald Trump campaign people, and perhaps even Trump himself, had been “incidentally collected” by the US government.

If true, this means that someone authorized the monitoring of Trump
campaign communications using Section 702 of the FISA Act. Could it have
been then-President Obama? We don’t know. Could it
have been other political enemies looking for something to harm the
Trump campaign or presidency? It is possible.

There is much we do not yet know about what happened and there is
probably quite a bit we will never know. But we do know several very
important things about the government spying on Americans.

First there is Section 702 itself. The provision was passed in 2008
as part of a package of amendments to the 1978 FISA bill. As with the
PATRIOT Act, we were told that we had to give the government more power
to spy on us so that it could catch terrorists. We had to give up some
of our liberty for promises of more security, we were told. We were also
told that the government would only spy on the bad guys, and that if we
had nothing to hide we should have nothing to fear.

We found out five years later from Edward Snowden
that the US government viewed Section 702 as a green light for the mass
surveillance of Americans. Through programs he revealed, like PRISM, the
NSA is able to collect and store our Internet search history, the
content of our emails, what files we have shared, who we have chatted
with electronically, and more.

That’s why people like NSA whistleblower William Binney said that we know the NSA was spying on Trump because it spies on all of us!

Ironically, FISA itself was passed after the Church Committee
Hearings revealed the abuses, criminality, and violations of our privacy
that the CIA and other intelligence agencies had been committing for
years. FISA was supposed to rein in the intelligence community but, as
is often the case in Washington, it did the opposite: it ended up giving
the government even more power to spy on us.

So President Trump might have been “wiretapped” by Obama, as he
claimed, but unfortunately he will not draw the right conclusions from
the violation. He will not see runaway spying on Americans as a
grotesque attack on American values. That is unfortunate, because this
could have provided a great teaching moment for the president. Seeing
how all of us are vulnerable to this kind of government abuse, President
Trump could have changed his tune on the PATRIOT Act and all government
attacks on our privacy. He could have stood up for liberty, which is
really what makes America great.

Section 702 of the FISA Act was renewed in 2012, just before we
learned from Snowden how it is abused. It is set to expire this December
unless Congress extends it again. Knowing what we now know about this
anti-American legislation we must work hard to prevent its renewal. They
will try to scare us into supporting the provision, but the loss of our
liberty is what should scare us the most!